Bees are the most important pollinators worldwide and the checklist provides access to taxonomic information and distribution data on country level to about 3350 bee species in 102 genera in the western Palaearctic region, with almost 2000 species recorded for Europe alone. The site contains regularly updated information from both published and unpublished sources including data from a whole range of private and public collections that are provided by European wild bee experts. The checklist reflects the current state of knowledge on the taxonomy and distribution of western Palaearctic bees, making it a prime source of information not only for taxonomists but also ecologists and agricultural scientists.

The checklist project started in 2008 and it quickly became clear that taxonomic expertise is globally lacking for several genera and that this gap is likely to grow quickly due to the progressive ageing of the community of bee taxonomists . The places most heavily affected by the loss of taxonomic knowledge are the “hotspots” of species diversity and endemism around the Mediterranean, in Turkey and the Middle East. Unfortunately, these are the areas that are most likely to be heavily affected by climate and landscape change. For this reason it seems possible that most of the predicted changes and losses of unique fauna will go unnoticed.

Bombus (Pyrobombus) pratorum, the early bumblebee on Pentaglottis sempervirens

The Parasites and Vectors division in Life Sciences has been re-designated as the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Identification & Characterization of Schistosome Strains & their Snail Intermediate Hosts until December 2016. This is in recognition of the importance of their work and expertise on Schistosoma species, the parasitic blood flukes that cause the debilitating disease schistosomiasis, and is a good example of how the NHM contributes to the solution of global problems of health and wellbeing.

The group has had a long-standing research focus on Schistosoma parasites, initially born from research on the molluscan (snail) intermediate hosts and host-parasite interactions. Schistosomes have a two-host life cycle involving an intermediate snail host and a definitive vertebrate host. The relationship between the schistosomes and the snail is such that precise identifications of both are required in order to understand the transmission and the epidemiology of the disease. By researching the factors involved in Schistosoma parasite - snail host infection dynamics, the team can provide expert advice to countries affected by schistosomiasis.

What is schistosomiasis? A staggering number of people are infected by schistosomes, over 200 million people worldwide with over 700 million people at risk of infection. It is a disease of low socio-economic status, affecting the poorest communities and most neglected, vulnerable people; it is therefore classified as a neglected tropical disease (NTD). Infants and children are especially prone to infection and the damage caused by schistosomes can lead to blood in urine, painful urination, diarrhoea, bloody stool, anaemia, stunted growth, enlarged liver and spleen, bladder and liver damage. In certain cases early childhood infections can lead to bladder cancer and liver fibrosis in adulthood. Over 90% of infected people live in sub-Saharan Africa, and the NHM team concentrates its research efforts in areas such as Tanzania, Niger and Senegal, working with teams in country to help find better solutions to reduce the impact of this debilitating disease.

Research at the NHM - The group at the Museum is involved in a number of collaborations with research organisations here and overseas:

SCORE - The Schistosomiasis Consortium for Operational Research and Evaluation (SCORE), funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation aims to aid national control programs by defining the best intervention methods and cost effective strategies for schistosomiasis control in sub-Saharan Africa. Part of the research undertaken at the NHM monitors the impact of Praziquantel (the only oral drug effective in treating all forms of schistosomiasis in sub-Saharan Africa), on parasite populations, in order to monitor for the potential development of drug resistance.

SCAN - The Museum, with funding from the Wellcome Trust, has set up a rapidly expanding schistosome repository called SCAN (Schistosomiasis Collection at the NHM) which preserves and documents schistosome samples collected from Africa in order to provide material for researchers both within and outside the Museum.

ZEST - ZEST (Zanzibar Elimination of Schistosomiasis Transmission) is being led collaboratively by the Zanzibar Ministry of Health and the Museum’s David Rollinson (funded by SCORE), director of the NHM -WHO collaborating Centre. This ambitious programme is attempting to eliminate schistosomiasis – the first time in a sub-Saharan African country.

London Centre for Neglected Tropical Disease Research - The Museum is also a founding member of the new London Centre for Neglected Tropical Disease Research, launched on the 30 January 2013 in collaboration with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Imperial College. This important new initiative is a valuable step forward as it brings together world-class skills and expertise to answer important research questions concerning the biology and control of neglected tropical diseases in partnership with governments, the private sector, academic institutions and other key NTD centres.

The New Forest is a UK biodiversity hotspot with habitats of European-wide importance. These include substantial pasture woodlands and wet and dry heathland. A large amount of inventory-style research has been conducted in the national park, but biodiversity patterns have seldom been explored in a quantitative way across the whole landscape. We set out to address this deficit by investigating quantitative multi-taxon biodiversity patterns in as comprehensive as way as possible. This work began in 2010 and was a cross-departmental programme involving scientists from Entomology, Botany, Zoology and Mineralogy. It built on the now 11-year continuous soil and litter sampling programme undertaken by the Soil Biodiversity Group. Numerous taxonomic groups were studied but not all of the identification and analysis work has been completed for all those groups. In this talk Paul will specifically discuss the results of the soil/litter macrofauna and tree lichen research and place the work in a broader UK context, examining what they tells us about temporal, spatial and environmental drivers of UK biodiversity. The work confirms the importance of the National Park as a UK biodiversity hotspot as well as recognising several threats to that biodiversity both from management interventions and potentially from climate change.

The section Glareosae of the genus Carex (Cyperaceae) as a model for evolutionary studies in angiosperms

The causes of the abrupt diversification of angiosperms from the Cretaceous have been in debate since the origin of the evolution’s theory in order to explain Darwin’s "Abominable Mystery." The genus Carex, with over 2.000 species, is the most diverse among flowering plants and the largest in number of species in the temperate northern hemisphere. The present review compiles much of the bibliographic information available to date about Carex section Glareosae (ca. 25 spp.) to show that gathers a number of features that make it a good model for studies in systematics and evolution of flowering plants. Based on (1) the problematic taxonomy, which has been demonstrated in several taxonomic treatments, and also the controversial about the consideration of species, subspecies or varieties, (2) the different patterns of distribution (endemic, bipolar, etc..) and the different ecological requirements of each species, and (3) the cytogenetic variability at inter- and intraspecific level, we conclude that this group of species is a good model for researching the causes of speciation or drivers of evolution and speciation in flowering plants. Furthermore, these studies can help us in understanding the origin of the current biodiversity of the Earth and how to protect it.

The koinobiont (specialist) groups of the megadiverse parasitoid wasp family Ichneumonidae have been thought to be more species rich in temperate than tropical environments. However, recent studies have questioned this classic assumption. Here, I demonstrate which koinobiont subfamilies may have a regular species richness gradient in the Western Hemisphere based on relative abundance data from the southern US, Central America, and western Amazonia. I also show that additional sampling in tropical forests can reveal reservoirs of very high unknown ichneumonid diversity. As an example, I present a study which found over 170 undescribed Neotropical orthocentrine species using morphological and molecular species separation methods. This is over three times the number of all currently described tropical orthocentrine species. The talk will finish with presenting a multidisciplinary study attempting to promote environmentally sustainable behavior through free public ichneumonid species naming.

Remipedes are a small and enigmatic group of crustaceans, first described only 30 years ago. The stygiobiontic species of this group dwell in remote underwater cave habitats, so called anchialine caves. New analyses of both morphological and molecular data have recently suggested a close relationship between Remipedia and Hexapoda instead of the former hypotheses that remipedes represent a rather basal split within crustaceans. Thus, remipedes may be pivotal for understanding the evolutionary history of crustaceans and hexapods. However, to test this hypothesis using new data and new types of analytical approaches from the field of NGS (Next Generation Sequencing) data is important. The most recent phylogenomic analysis of pancrustaceans includes all crustacean species for which EST data are available (46 species), and the largest alignment encompasses 866,479 amino acid positions and 1,886 genes. A series of phylogenomic analyses was performed to evaluate pancrustacean relationships. The results demonstrate that the different ways to compile an initial data set of core orthologs and the selection of data subsets by matrix reduction can have marked effects on the reconstructed phylogenetic trees. Further, the comparison of nucleotide vs aminoa acid data level might represent an important step to identify noise and misleading signal in the data. Venomous animals are ubiquitous in aquatic and terrestrial habitats across the world. However, our understanding of fundamental issues about the biology and evolution of venoms and venomous organisms is incomplete because the main empirical pillars of venomics - the scientific study of venoms – are currently limited to a few well-studied taxa such as spiders, scorpions, reptiles and cone snails. In order to broaden and strengthen the foundation of venomics, a renewed focus on neglected putatively venomous taxa is needed, especially on taxa that are distantly related to known venomous species. In this respect aquatic cave dwelling remipede crustaceans are an extraordinarily promising group, as Crustacea is the only major traditional arthropod group that lacks known venomous species. We present here the first 3D morphological reconstruction of the venom apparatus of remipedes, as well as a transcriptomic profile of genes expressed in their putative venom glands based on next generation sequencing. The results shed new light on the convergent recruitment of venom toxins in the animal kingdom.

Remipedes are a small and enigmatic group of crustaceans, first described only 30 years ago. The stygiobiontic species of this group dwell in remote underwater cave habitats, so called anchialine caves. New analyses of both morphological and molecular data have recently suggested a close relationship between Remipedia and Hexapoda instead of the former hypotheses that remipedes represent a rather basal split within crustaceans. Thus, remipedes may be pivotal for understanding the evolutionary history of crustaceans and hexapods. However, to test this hypothesis using new data and new types of analytical approaches from the field of NGS (Next Generation Sequencing) data is important. The most recent phylogenomic analysis of pancrustaceans includes all crustacean species for which EST data are available (46 species), and the largest alignment encompasses 866,479 amino acid positions and 1,886 genes. A series of phylogenomic analyses was performed to evaluate pancrustacean relationships. The results demonstrate that the different ways to compile an initial data set of core orthologs and the selection of data subsets by matrix reduction can have marked effects on the reconstructed phylogenetic trees. Further, the comparison of nucleotide vs aminoa acid data level might represent an important step to identify noise and misleading signal in the data. Venomous animals are ubiquitous in aquatic and terrestrial habitats across the world. However, our understanding of fundamental issues about the biology and evolution of venoms and venomous organisms is incomplete because the main empirical pillars of venomics - the scientific study of venoms – are currently limited to a few well-studied taxa such as spiders, scorpions, reptiles and cone snails. In order to broaden and strengthen the foundation of venomics, a renewed focus on neglected putatively venomous taxa is needed, especially on taxa that are distantly related to known venomous species. In this respect aquatic cave dwelling remipede crustaceans are an extraordinarily promising group, as Crustacea is the only major traditional arthropod group that lacks known venomous species. We present here the first 3D morphological reconstruction of the venom apparatus of remipedes, as well as a transcriptomic profile of genes expressed in their putative venom glands based on next generation sequencing. The results shed new light on the convergent recruitment of venom toxins in the animal kingdom.

Popocatepetl volcano in Mexico, is the 2nd highest volcano in North America and one of the most currently active in the world. It last erupted in April 2010 and has since been discharging small ash clouds and an average 7 tonnes of gas per day.A successfully funded collections enhancement bid permitted Dave Smith and Chiara Petrone to collect fresh, well documented pyroclastic and lava samples from known, dated eruptions and fill a void in the petrology collection that will permit future geochemical research into the evolution of the magmatic processes occurring beneath this dynamic volcano.In addition to field sampling, this exciting project was the first Earth Science trip to involve the Nature Live team. Following the successes of biodiversity trips to Borneo, Costa Rica and the Bahamas this Earth Science trip, although a much smaller venture, included a number of live videoconferences with schools, Nature Live link-ups and live web-chats. Fresh back from the dizzy heights of 4600m, Dave Smith will give a visual presentation of his experience of working on the side of this intimidating volcano, and will discuss the merits of contextualising field samples with good documentation and images.

Relatively little is known about the early evolution of ornithischian (bird-hipped) dinosaurs, due to a dearth of specimens from the Late Triassic–Early Jurassic. New material from a bonebed in the Venezuelan Andes, from the La Quinta Formation, is helping to shed light on their diversification in the wake of the end-Triassic extinction (ETE). The new animal is represented by abundant, but disarticulated material, representing at least four (and probably more) juveniles and subadults. New dating of the formation, based on detrital zircons, places the material at 200.9 Ma, just 0.5 million years after the ETE. Phylogenetic analysis recovers the new dinosaur close to the base of the group, providing some insights into the initial evolution of ornithischian biology. This material shows that ornithischians recovered quickly after the ETE and also increased their geographical distribution at this time.

DANABALAN, R., Ponsonby, D.J. & LINTON, Y.M. 2012. A critical assessment of available molecular identification tools for determining the status of Culex pipiens s.l. in the United Kingdom. Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association, 28(4): 68-74.

Bryophytes (liverworts, mosses and hornworts) are the closest living relatives to the first land plants. Because of their evolutionary position, bryophytes are considered key to understanding the origin and evolution of some of the major adaptations that drove plant terrestrialization: cuticle, stomata, intercellular spaces, conducting cells and fungal symbioses. In this seminar I will focus on the latter and will discuss how our latest collaborative research is providing novel insights on the earliest symbiotic events between land plants and fungi. Our discovery that the Mucoromycotina, a fungal lineage thought to have diverged earlier than the Glomeromycota, are the ubiquitous symbionts in liverworts from the earliest divergent clade of land plants (Haplomitriopsida) directly challenges the long-held paradigm that glomeromycotes formed the ancestral land plant-fungus symbiosis. On the other hand, our latest anatomical and molecular phylogenetic data on the mycobionts of hornworts – currently considered the sister group to tracheophytes - show that in this group both Glomeromycota and Mucoromycotina fungi can form symbioses, and often simultaneously. This discovery suggests that ancient terrestrial plants relied on a more versatile and wider repertoire of fungi than hitherto assumed and further highlights the so far unappreciated ecological and evolutionary role of the Mucoromycotina, a largely ‘forgotten’ primeval fungal lineage.

Large scale species delimitation method for hyperdiverse groupNico Puillandre

Speciation is rarely an instantaneous event, but rather a process during which the characters (DNA, morphology, ecology...) will accumulate differences at various rhythms. Consequently, species delimitation methods should rely on several lines of evidence, and species should be considered as hypotheses that will be modified with additional characters. Furthermore, traditional approaches are sometimes not adapted, especially in hyperdiverse groups such as the Turridae (Gastropoda, Conoidea), where most of the species remain unknown and where homoplasy and plasticity makes morphological characters weakly reliable. We propose to overcome these difficulties by using first COI barcodes, analysed with a new method we developed, called ABGD (Automatic Barcode Gap Discovery), which automatically identifies in the pairwise distribution of genetic distances the limit between intra and interspecific distances. We use a range of prior intraspecific divergence to infer from the data a model-based limit for intraspecific divergence. The method then detects the barcode gap as the first significant gap beyond this limit and uses it to partition the data. Inference of the limit and gap detection are then recursively applied to previously obtained groups to get finer partitions until there is no further partitioning. Species hypotheses obtained with ABGD were also compared with results from GMYC, and then modified and validated using other available evidences (an unlinked gene – 28S, geographic and bathymetrical distributions and morphological characters) in an integrative context. Following this methodology, we delimited 94 species of Turridae, of which more than 50 are likely new to science.

Through the looking glass: mirror images in animal formMenno Schilthuizen

Although many animals, especially the so-called Bilateria, seem bilaterally symmetric, many are internally strongly asymmetric, and some even externally. Snails are a good example of the latter. With the exception of their head and foot, their bodies are coiled helically. Although the spiral-like shape of snails is very familiar, the phenomenon poses many riddles. For example, we still don't fully understand the genetics and development of coiled development. Another mystery is how and why right-handed coiling evolves from left-handed coiling and vice versa, and how some species maintain both coiling morphs in the same population. In this talk, I will explore the evolution of asymmetry in snails, and then expand the malacological insights to asymmetry in the body shapes of other animals.

Registration: Registration is free, but please email the organizer, Suzanne Williams (s.williams@nhm.ac.uk) and let her know you will attend the meeting.

In 1913 the museum initiated the systematic recording of all cetaceans that die along the shores of the British Isles. On this day one hundred years ago the first stranded animal was recorded by the museum. The National Whale Stranding Recording Scheme has been collecting data ever since. Through the scheme the NHM has had access to the cetaceans that come ashore for research and its collections.

The talk will be split into 3 sections, the history of the scheme, benefit to the collections and the current scheme.

Recent molecular studies have suggested that the basal parasitic flatworms (Neodermata) had a simple life cycle, while more derived parasitic flatworms (Cestoda, Trematoda) developed complex life cycles. The intermediate stages of cestodes and trematodes have commonly been implicated in the formation of pearls or other shell secretions in recent bivalves. Late Paleozoic blister and early Mesozoic free pearls in fossil bivalves and other mollusks have therefore often been used as an indication for the presence of complex parasite life cycles. We investigated the occurrence of fossil pearls in mollusks as well parasitic flatworms fossils through geological time in an up to date ecological and phylogenetic framework. Their fossil record proves to be extremely biased, particularly within the Paleozoic and Mesozoic. Furthermore, the occurrence of pearls in distantly related orders as well as various other mollusk phyla suggests an ancient origin of pearl-like structures in the earliest shelled mollusks. Although the flatworm body fossil record is very poor, it does agree with the idea that parasitic flatworms coevolved with their vertebrate hosts to some extent. In absence of reliable parasitic flatworm fossils, the host fossil record is often used to calibrate molecular clocks. Using the host fossil record to test the hypothesis of coevolution leads to circularity, which might be resolved by calibrating parasite molecular clocks with biogeographic events instead.

Establishing an evolutionary timescale is the fundamental yet elusive goal of the earth and life sciences. Molecular clock methodology has usurped completely the role of the incomplete fossil record in establishing an evolutionary timescale but, ironically, it remains reliant on palaeontological data for calibration. Not surprisingly, it has become popular to eschew the fossil evidence entirely, instead calibrating divergence time analyses using geochronologically dated tectonic events that have left a phylogenetic footprint of divergence in evolutionary lineages. Unfortunately, tectonic calibrations have not enjoyed the same scrutiny and, therefore the development, as fossil calibrations. The profound accuracy and precision of geochronological dates of rock units belies their accuracy and precision in dating divergence events because: these biogeographic calibrations are rarely, if ever, justified; (ii) in eschewing fossil evidence, biogeographic calibrations assume the biogeography of living organisms is a faithful reflection of their ancestral lineages; (iii) age evidence is equally rarely established; (iv) tectonic episodes are protracted and so they should be represented by spans of time, not single dates; (v) biogeographic events have a different impact on lineages dependent on their ecology. These limitations can be overcome or, at least controlled for since, like fossil calibrations, vicariance-based calibrations can be implemented as probabilistic constraints that span an interval of time, entertaining the probability that the tectonic event was causal to the calibrating node, (ii) errors in the accuracy of dating the tectonic event, (iii) the temporal extent of the tectonic episode, (iv) the differential impact of the tectonic event on organisms with different ecologies. Finally, we would argue that palaeontological evidence can add to knowledge of the historical biogeography and ecology of evolutionary lineages supplementing insights provided by the extant biodiversity.

Oceanic island biotas are typically characterized by a suite of life-history traits known as ‘island syndromes’. Among such evolutionary phenomena, the loss of dispersal ability characteristic for island taxa has contributed to the hypothesis that islands are evolutionary dead-ends. By using different ecological and phylogeographic approaches, we investigate whether such a prediction applies to highly vagile organisms, taking bryophytes as a model.

Specimens are not necessarily data, and use of a species name in the literature does not necessarily confer reliability. These are not novel observations, so the misuse of junk data, from collections, observations and catalogues, is endlessly surprising and sometimes horrifying. I use examples from a relatively poorly known but huge group of insects - parasitoid wasps (Hymenoptera) - to demonstrate that much more effort needs to be directed towards specimen sorting and identification. It's not all bad news though; major collections of obscure wasps are rich in specimens that can be used to address all sorts of interesting questions, given appropriate investment.

MORTON, B. 2013. The functional morphology of the abyssal Limopsis cristata (Arcoida: Limopsidae) with a discussion on the evolution of the more advanced bivalve foot. Acta Zoologica, 94(1): 74-85. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1463-6395.2012.00561.x )